Winner of the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship 2017 from the Australia Council for the Arts, Elizabeth is a graduate of the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University (QCGU). After completing her Bachelor of Music in 2008, she continued to complete a Master of Music Studies in 2010, also at the QCGU.
In 2015 she was the winner of The Opera Foundation for young Australians’ Lady Fairfax New York Scholarship and the 2015 Sydney Opera House Award. This year, Elizabeth was one of five Finalists in the 2018 Elizabeth Connell Prize for Dramatic Sopranos.
In the United States, Elizabeth has sung Rosalinda in Strauss Jr’s Die Fledermaus with the Fargo-Moorhead Opera. Her first mainstage role with the company her performance was heralded by John Lamb in the Fargo Forum as playing the role with “ delicious suspicion.... Lewis' soprano is powerful and so is her stage presence. She is as beguiling as she is imposing when she finally confronts her philandering husband.”
Elizabeth was a member of the Gate City Bank Young Artist Program 2017 with Fargo-Moorhead Opera. While with the company, she sang the roles of Daters 5, 8 and 22 in Speed Dating Tonight!. Elizabeth’s performance of Edith in The Pirates of Penzance was also acclaimed by the Fargo Forum – “Lewis plays the boy-cray sister Edith with so much energy that even when she is not unleashing her impressive Soprano she threatens to steal the show”.
In her native Australia, Elizabeth became a member of the Opera Q Studio where she was a principal artist in their new work Abandon (Opera Q/DanceNorth) at the Australian Chamber Music Festival 2013 and reprised the role at the World Theatre Festival 2014. Following this, she joined the Developing Artist Program at the Victorian Opera and graduated with a Master of Music (Opera Performance) from The University of Melbourne (MCM) in 2015. As a part of the program she sang Principal roles in many World Premier works and in the company’s Outreach Program. While still in the Young Artist Program she was invited to perform Dido in Dido and Aeneas for the Brisbane Baroque Festival 2015. Her performance was met with praise from The Australian - “... from the moment Lewis glided onto stage as Queen of Carthage she was every inch the regal presence, commanding all she surveyed....[nothing] could distract from a cast that rose to the challenge of having a genuine newborn star such as Lewis among them.”
This winter Elizabeth will sing the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos under the baton of Simone Young in her hometown of Brisbane, Australia.
